My mother got me into disco music at an early age. You can read all about my disco interests in LADOD parts I, II & III. On the other hand, my father was a huge Kraftwerk fan. As a child, I was subjected to a strange blend of ultra upbeat dance floor disco such as ABBA and the Bee Gees, and the relentless electronic beats and bass lines of Kraftwerks revolutionary EDM sound. They were also both fans of Blondie, who over her/their career had a foot in almost every popular genre of the age – from folk and rock, to disco, funk and even rap music – in fact Blondie was the first artist ever to reach number one on the US Billboard Chart with a rap song (‘Rapture’, 1981) . A white British girl… odd!

The point is that subsequently, my music taste today is based heavily in funky EDM. I’m interested in a lot of EDM, really; Techno, ‘Electro’, ‘Nu-Disco’, Trip Hop, down-tempo post apocalyptic punk jungle bass flop (this may or may not be an actual genre, I’m not sure). But the reason I’m most interested in most EDM is because as a producer, the technical side of the music is very contemporary and/or original. But there’s really only one specific niche of dance music that gets me going – makes my body move in a ridiculous zero-gravity tango that wouldn’t exactly qualify as ‘dancing’, but also moves me on the inside. Not some kind of creepy emotional connection with the music but… well actually no, I suppose it is some kind of creepy emotional connection. What I’m getting at with this is that this one little sub-genre of EDM really gets me going. I space-out in the breakdowns, I sing my heart out when I feel the need, I wee my pants in the buildups, and am close to epileptic fit when the beat drops. I think a lot of us music fans can relate to this feeling, and it could be applied to almost all genres of the magical world of EDM; for me it’s Funky House.

Some might refer to the genre as ‘Disco House’ – in my mind, this conjures the thought of hordes of bedroom producer kids, taking the chorus from a brilliant disco classic and applying a kick drum and sidechain compression, and thinking they’re making some really original house music. Some might call it ‘French/Filtered House’ – this just makes me think of the great Daft Punk and their thousands of not so great imitators. I like to use the word ‘funk’ because to me it holds connotations of more soulful music: with a bit more pep, pizzazz, oomph – heavy and relentless bass-driven jams of audio deliciousness.

I have a Thursday residency, and every Tuesday/Wednesday I spend a good couple of hours trawling through the new releases and the forgotten classics of House, Deep House, Indie Dance/Nu Disco (Beatport classification) and Disco House on sites like Beatport or Juno Records, or the dreaded 256kbps world of iTunes. I’m looking for the deepest of funkiness, the grooviest of beats. A lot of the time, I spend a lot of time, sifting through a lot of time wasting bad music (that makes sense, stay with me). Occasionally I stumble upon a hidden gem – a producer I’ve never heard of, a bass line I could never have imagined. This is an absolute high for me. Anyway, I won’t go in to too much detail as I’ve already rambled on about the origin of my interest in funky House music, and I think it’s time we heard some music.

Here are some of the tunes I’ve found in recent weeks. Some have only recently been released, some maybe slipped through my grasp, only to be rediscovered at a later date. While I feel rather ashamed of giving you these tantalizingly high quality audio files, I do it in the hope that most of you have never heard of these songs/artists, and will be henceforth encouraged to digitally crate-dig as it were, for the meaningful music of yesteryear, the soulful sound of today, and all of the brilliant tracks from all the brilliant producers who aren’t featured in the charts, and aren’t showered in the attention granted to them by the god-awful ‘Hype Machine’.

BLACK MIGHTY ORCHESTRA – GIVE ME YOUR LOVE (CRAZY PENIS RE-WORK INSTRUMENTAL MIX) (320 kbps)

SOULEANCE – CHEMISE (320 kbps)

TELE MUSIC – METEOR ONE (BONAR BRADBERRY EDIT) (320 kbps)

SESSION VICTIM – TOMORROW NIGHT (320 kbps)

ART OF TONE – THE WORLD AS I LIVE IT (320 kbps)